Finding Humanity in Slightly Creepy Mannequins
By Matt Malinowski
The old wooden floor creaks beneath my feet as I slowly move down the hallway of a stranger’s home. The house is warm, with a lingering smell of cigarette smoke, and the afternoon light is fading through its thin windows. I feel like an intruding time traveler, though I have been invited to enter. I arrive at the kitchen, and she stares blankly into the distance from behind the acrylic panel that separates her world and mine. Her hair is pulled back neatly, and she is surrounded by vintage kitchen equipment. I want to explore her story, her Nevada, but something feels a little unsettling. Her vacant expression and rigid pose are made even more disenchanting by the large steel knife glimmering in her hand - I decide to leave.
A Vintage Kitchen and an Oversized Knife. Photo by Matt Malinowski.
A radio roars to life with big band sounds from the 1940s as I open the door of the next house. An old woman silently offers me an unmarked bottle of medicine from beyond the glass that protects her living room like a time capsule. I don’t feel inclined to accept. Around the corner, two boys are frozen with perpetual joy locked on their faces in a kitchen surrounded by cookies. In an adjacent bathroom, a wooden man infinitely holds a razor close to his face, but he will never shave.
The historic buildings that line the central lane (Heritage Street) of the Clark County Museum in Henderson, Nevada, share the story of Nevada life in various time periods. Though I may not feel completely comfortable ambling around a mannequin’s home while they hold a sharp kitchen instrument, I am finding myself being empathic towards the Nevadans they represent. I am imagining the brutally hot summer months without air conditioning. I am wondering how my constantly stimulated brain would have handled the lack of instantly digestible content from a phone or television. I am asking questions about access to water, grooming habits, and how different Nevada life must have been throughout different eras of the 20th century.
A chapel awaits at the end of the street. It teeters on the edge of being both beautiful and eerie in the twilight of a winter’s day. I swing its heavy door open and its old hinges squeal. Half a dozen sets of eyes lock on me in the entryway. I have interrupted the nuptials of a 1970s mannequin wedding. The couple does not look pleased. My camera slowly raises, I take an uncomfortable photo and lower my lens – I decide to leave.
"I'll Just Be Going Now…" Photo by Matt Malinowski.
On the drive home, I am thinking not just of mannequins, but of all the other human facsimiles that I associate with Nevada. Pappy, the talking cowboy that used to sit outside of the entrance to Bonnie Springs, Zoltar the Fortune Teller on the sidewalk of Boulder City, our neon icon Vegas Vic, and the Blue Angel that used to twirl atop a Las Vegas motel of her namesake. There are so many more that offer us nostalgia or convey messages, both honest and flawed. In the end, the exhibit at the Clark County Museum is engaging and memorable because of the humanity of its slightly creepy mannequins, not their lack of it.
Matt Malinowski loves writing, museums, retro video games, science fiction, and wildlife. His right hand has high-fived the real Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, he has stood where Ben Kenobi showed Luke Skywalker a bird’s eye view of Mos Eisley, and has ambition to see a wild moose soon. He holds a master’s degree in Museum Studies and a graduate certificate in Digital Storytelling from Harvard University Extension School and studied Biology and Anthropology as an undergraduate.